HYLA Blog

Incentivize Consumers to Keep Using Your Trade-in Program

Enticing and satisfying customers so that they keep coming back into your store is not a new concept. It’s as old as commerce itself, but it’s easy to lose sight of that necessary goal in the day-to-day bustle of business.

For businesses that have a mobile device trade-in program, incentivizing customers starts with the fact that your customer engagement should not simply end with the sale of a device or a customer’s sign up for a device financing plan.

This is a competitive market, and you must continue engaging with customers at every step of their journeys using your product or service. Whether you are a carrier, an OEM or a retailer, you need to continue conversing with your customers and keep them delighted and positively surprised with what you have to offer.

So, here are some tips to ensure your customers will keep coming back to you with their old devices, over and over again; encouraging them to think of only your trade-in program and not the competition’s.

1. Proactive Customer Engagement

Steve Jobs would tell you, "Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves."

An example of this closeness could come as a notification when a customer’s lease is nearing its end, by sending him or her proactive notices about best deals and promotions on new devices. Be hyper-targeted: provide customers with notifications that are relevant to their past usage patterns and predictive needs. Top performing companies use data at every step: from reaching for known product issues, to observing usage patterns signaling a problem, to using data from connected devices and often spotting a problem before it happens.

55% of high-performing service teams say they’re able to predict customer service needs more than 80% of the time — that’s three times more often than underperforming service teams. HYLA Analytics can provide you with the kind of insight you need to delight customers with notifications.

2. Seamless Customer Experience with Omni-Channel

Omni-channel is feeding the need for a customer journey: a consistent, personalized experience across every touchpoint with a company and across every device and channel being used by consumers.

When the customer is ready to engage with you again over the phone or in store, you already see their on-line trade-in attempts, their price comparison searches, and even their Twitter conversations. With this rich, personalized insight, you can immediately work with them to answer questions in real-time.

Many companies deliver effortless and individualized interactions across all devices and channels. HYLA’s Omni-channel trade-in and buyback solution can allow carriers, retailers, and OEMs to do this by understanding cross-channel engagement in real-time with complete customer context.

3. Self Service is Empowering

Give your customers the answers they need whenever they need them. Ever since the invention of the search engine, we are accustomed to quickly getting answers to almost any question — whether from Google or Alexa Customers have the same mindset about companies and products. They're often looking online to solve their own questions and problems before they ever think about reaching out to customer service.

Allow them to search and easily find the value of their devices, the upward or downward trends, and advice on whether they should trade their device in and when using your website. Use HYLA Analytics to keep your customers educated and make their decision making easy. 67% of high-performing enterprise companies have invested heavily in self-service communities. As your company and customer base grow, it's important to offer avenues where your customers can find answers quickly on their own.

4. Offer Value-add Services

Differentiate your offering by delivering long-term value-add services, such as bundling your initial device sale with insurance. Mobile devices are an expensive purchase these days: upwards of $500 per device. If a device is lost, stolen or damaged, a customer is usually in the deep end. Here’s where value-added insurance can make a difference.

Since mobile devices are a necessity, a quick and adequate replacement is required. However, many times customers have to rely on alternative options outside of your company to replace their device losses. Offering insurance at the point of sale, and even later, would allow you to continue staying engaged with customers and provide them with a viable solution in case their devices break or get lost.

Hopefully these tips get you started toward incentivizing customers to only think of your program when they trade-in their mobile devices. For more information on how to achieve an efficient mobile trade-in program, download the whitepaper!